The Ice Girl
by Meelu the Bold
Summary: The Black Fang protects their own. Complete.
1. I The Mother

I. The Mother

Sick of travel, Nino and her six-year-old sons arrived in Araphen with an hour to sunset. The green-haired woman had but one immediate destination in mind. Clutching Lucius's letter, she picked her way through the crowds, holding her boys close to her as they walked.

She wiped her brow, squinting at the street signs and the fading sun. Nino glanced at the letter for directions and then at Lugh and Rei, to soothe her aching nerves. Rei glared at her, but Lugh just looked tired. Nino tucked the letter away and took Rei's hand.

"We're almost there," she reassured them.

Nino tugged the two boys along. After a short skirmish with a particularly aggressive street-vendor, the small family approached a rickety wooden building squashed between the Araphen Tactician's Guild and the Beggars' Guild. A small spiky haired child burst forth from the door, followed by a gentle eyed monk with a rather cross expression.

"Chad, if you don't get back here!" Lucius demanded.

With a practiced hand, Nino reached out and nabbed the end of Chad's passing cloak. He fell backward and Nino released it in the interest of retaining her own balance. Lucius took the two or three seconds Nino had bought him to swoop down on the boy.

"Thank St. Elimine," Lucius intoned, raising one hand vertically in respect to the dead Hero as the other gripped Chad's hand firmly. "And you too . . . Nino? Nino, is that you?"

"Yes," said Nino, smiling.

"Ah, come in, rest," Lucius insisted immediately. Nino pushed Rei and Lugh up the front porch.

Lucius's accommodations for them comprised of a wash bucket and a clean bed in the far corner of a long room. The room was filled with children who were pretending to sleep while watching the two newcomers. Nino ignored them in favor of putting her own children to bed, something they didn't seem too keen on.

"Nino," Lucius said to her, after quieting the other children. He gestured to the door. "If you would, could I speak with you in the kitchen . . .?"

"Of course," Nino said. She followed him out.

Nino consciously noted how clean everything was. And warm. There was a distinct aura of warmness that didn't truly exist, not in a physical sense. The kitchen was clean and warm, too, without actually being warm. There were dishes in the sink, although someone had made a valiant effort to clean them. Lucius sat down a wooden table and closed his eyes for a moment. Nino pulled out a second chair and sat down too.

"Well, little Nino, it has been quite a while," Lucius frowned. "No, that's not right. You aren't so little anymore."

"I'm still short," Nino grinned, feeling a bit of her younger self peek through. "And I can only just read small words."

"That's not what I meant," Lucius replied, a smile returning to his face. "You've grown in other ways as well. You're a mother."

"Of two very different little boys," Nino reminded him.

"Just like those brothers you used to tell us about?" Lucius asked. "You are going to Bern so you can visit their graves, correct? But why leave behind your two sons?"

"I've heard rumors . . ." Nino trailed off. She began anew. "I mean . . . there's someone . . . who's there . . ."

"Oh?" Lucius said gently. "Would this be . . .?"

"Yes," Nino closed her eyes. "Jaffar is in Bern. Or at least, he might be. I want my sons to know their father . . ."

"Very well," Lucius stood up, a stern expression on his already creased face. "I shall watch over your sons until your return. Upon this one condition."

"What is that?" Nino asked.

"Tell them one last bedtime story before you leave," he said simply. Nino brightened.

"Of course," she agreed with a smile.

Lucius led her back up the stairs into the long room with the beds. She walked softly, although no child was actually asleep yet. Lugh and Rei were currently fighting over the blanket, but ceased as they saw their mother approach. She kissed them both on the cheek.

"Okay . . . let me think a story for you two," Nino said, closing her eyes in thought. The rest of the room suddenly leaned in to listen.

"Got one yet?" Rei asked impatiently.

"Yes," Nino said finally, opening her eyes. "Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived happily with her mother, her father, and her two brothers . . ."


	2. II The Beginning

II. The Beginning

Ursula heaved an irritated sort of sigh. Nino noticed immediately, and suddenly felt an urge to inquire as to the why.

"Ursula, why are you upset?" Nino asked innocently, her blue eyes wide. "You've been so moody since everyone left!"

The two were outside in one of Sonia's small gardens, Ursula sitting on a small bench while Nino played with her dolls. She only had two, both painstakingly crafted from twigs and old bits of clothing. Her mother had charged Ursula with looking after the child, which the Valkyrie had not been pleased by.

"I do wonder why," Ursula said in what might've been a pleasant tone if she hadn't been gritting her teeth.

Brendan and his two sons had left for Thria, to rid the world of yet another greedy lord. But that had been three weeks ago and they were due back any day now. Legault and Jan had pleaded terribly busy and consequently unable to watch after one active little girl. Ursula griped. As loathe as she was to leave Lady Sonia's side, she would have preferred to go with the three Reeds and their group than babysit Nino.

"I've learnt Elfire!" Nino informed her, changing the subject with a whim. "Thanks to you!"

"That's wonderful Nino," Ursula said absently. So that was where her spare tome had disappeared to.

"I hope Mother will talk to Father about sending me on missions soon!" Nino said cheerfully. "Uncle Legault says I'm still too young, though. What do you think, Auntie Ursula?"

"Don't call me auntie," Ursula cringed slightly, rubbing the skin around her eyes, as if words could cause crow's feet. "I'm not so old."

"But you aren't really a sister-type person," Nino pointed out. "You act much older! So you are an auntie."

There was a long bit of silence.

"Auntie Ursula?"

"Yes, Nino?" There was a tinge of irritation in the older woman's voice.

"Which of my brothers do you like best?"

"I dislike them each equally."

"But if you had to choose."

"I don't know." A sigh.

"If I had to choose, I'd choose Lloyd. He lets me win at cards. Linus doesn't."

"Ah . . . I guess I'd choose Linus. Not as smart. Easier to push around."

"Don't you like either of them?"

"No."

"That's not true," Nino sang happily.

"What?"

"You like Lloyd better. You heal him first after missions and you're always looking at him and sighing and stuff."

"What?"

"It's true then! You aren't saying anything!"

"Shut up," Ursula snapped, losing her patience.

"I know who Auntie Ursula's in love with," Nino told her two dolls, snickering. "Heehee."

"Lovely," Ursula muttered, looking to the sky wearily. "When those brothers of yours come back, I'll--

"You'll what, Dame Ursula?" Linus asked, appearing from behind. Nino shrieked happily and ran toward him, arms wide.

She stopped just short of him and held out her fist. "Rock!"

"Paper!" Linus held out his fist.

"Knives!" they both called.

"Rock smashes knives!" Nino giggled happily. "Say it!"

"I . . . I'm weird," Linus said, narrowing his eyes accusingly. From behind him, his brother laughed.

"Finally, a statement I can agree with," he said good-naturedly. Nino waved excitedly.

"Lloyd! You'll all here!" she said. In a burst of energy, she leapt up and wrapped her arms around Linus' neck. He gagged.

"N-nino, easy there!" he tried to free himself of the little girl, unsuccessfully.

Ursula zeroed in on Lloyd like a pegasus on a noble carrot. Her eyes were narrow.

"You are going to take that . . . girl, and you are going to keep her from my sight for the next few hours," Ursula warned him, her face almost impassive. She gripped his shirt and pulled him close, to make sure he understood completely. "If I see her, hear her, i _sense /i _her in any way possible, I shall hunt you down and i _castrate you and your brother with my Mend staff /i ._"

"And I have no doubt that you could do that," Lloyd nodded, somewhat frightened. This was a side of Ursula that many prayed never to see again. He gently pushed her aside. "I'll go attend to your request. Nino! Linus! Let's go, the psychotic lady doesn't like us any more!"

"Okay," Nino cheered. Ursula glared daggers behind a deadly, sweet smile. "What does psychotic mean?"

"It means that she's attractive and kind and very very forgiving," Lloyd supplied quickly. Ursula, taking enough abuse for one day, skulked off, presumably to find Sonia.

"Oh, okay," Nino nodded. "Then you're psychotic, too, Lloyd!"

Linus rolled his eyes. "What about me?"

"I guess you could be psychotic if you wanted to," Nino conceded. "But you'd have to work at attractiveness."

"What?!" Linus exclaimed.

"Let's go," Lloyd chuckled, turning. Linus and Nino followed.

"Hey, Lloyd?"

"Yes, Nino?"

"Was Auntie Ursula threatening you?"

". . . no."

"Oh. Okay."

"Lloyd?"

"Yes, Nino?"

"What does 'castrate' mean?"

"Help! For the love of St. Elimine, God and Uncle Jan's chicken and dumpling soup, help me!" Linus shrieked, peeking through one eye. "Hey! C'mon now, I'm the princess, why isn't anyone helping me?"

"Because!" Nino said mock-crossly. She giggled helplessly. "I'm fighting the evil monster!"

"Rar," Lloyd laughed. "You'll never rescue the princess!"

The lake was one of those clear blue mountain lakes that were only swimmable in the dead of summer, when the water was just a tad bit not as cold as every other season. The hill the brothers and sister Reed had chosen boasted the only tree around, until the evergreen forest started, not a great distance away. The rest of the landscape was grassy and hilled.

Linus had chosen the tree as his tower, although he was merely sitting at the base, watching Lloyd and Nino fight at the lakeside with thin strips of driftwood. Nino, were she not a mage, would've made a decent myrmidon.

"Ha!" Nino cried, knocking away Lloyd's weapon. She knew perfectly well he had let her, but she pounced on her chance. "I have defeated you!"

"How?" Lloyd exclaimed, shocked. He fell back on his knees.

"I cut off your head," Nino explained, smiling as she rested her piece of driftwood at his neck. "Thwap."

"Oh," Lloyd said. He fell over, 'dead'.

"Hey! Hero!" Linus yelled, tired of being ignored. "Get over here, I need to be rescued!"

"I'm coming," Nino giggled, dropping her 'sword'. "Just wait a moment!"

Nino ran up the hill to the tree. She dashed to Linus' side and hugged him. "I've rescued you!"

Lloyd followed soon afterward, bearing both pieces of driftwood. He was grinning, watching in amusement as Linus tried to peel Nino's arms from his neck again.

"Oi, I'm tired now," Lloyd said, sitting down next to the two them. "This monster must be getting old."

"Are not," Nino protested. "You're not so much older than me and I'm not even tired, not even a little bit!"

"Nino, I'm at least ten years older than you," Lloyd replied seriously. "That's old."

"Is not."

"Is too."

"Uncle Legault's older than you and Linus and he's always saying, 'Nino, I'm not old, I'm not even thirty yet! Why do I get put with Uncle Jan? Stop calling me uncle!'" Nino imitated Legault's patronizing voice. Both of her stepbrothers laughed.

"Okay, I guess I'm not old," Lloyd allowed. He pulled a flask of some kind of liquid from his coat. "But I'm still tired. Linus, do you want some?"

"What is it?" Nino asked, crawling around Linus to see.

"Hard liquor," he replied.

"Can I try?" she begged. "Ursula was always drinking it every night you were gone!"

Linus and Lloyd glanced at each other. On the one hand, it explained a lot about Ursula. On the other, there wasn't that much in the flask to go around. Lloyd took a calculated risk.

"Okay," he said, removing the stopper. "Try it."

Nino guided the flask to her mouth and took a sip. She swallowed.

"Yuck!" she made a face. "It's nasty, how can you drink that?"

Linus laughed. "With a practiced and steady hand. Go play."

"If you two won't play with me, it's no fun," Nino whined, still wiping her tongue. "Yuck. It's no fun to play alone."

"Tell you what," Lloyd said, leaning forward and pointed to a more colorful patch on the hillside. "I saw a pretty bunch of flowers growing on that hillside over yonder. Why don't you go pick some for Sonia? I'm sure even she's not above flowers."

Nino brightened immediately. "Yeah! That's a great idea!"

She leapt to her feet and ran to find flowers for her mother, waving excitedly behind her.

"Be back in at least within two hours," Lloyd called. "We'll start a fire or something and eat!"

The two brothers heard an echoing "okay!" Smiling, Lloyd turned to Linus and offered him a drink.

"You think she heard me?" Lloyd asked, doubtfully.

"Hell no, now give me that," Linus said, snatching away the flask and taking a swig.

"Hey, leave some for me, now! Moron," Lloyd frowned, swatting his brother and taking the drink.

Now a ways away, Nino stopped running, exhaustion getting the better of her. She leaned over, resting on her knees, panting. She looked up, glancing around. Yes, just like Lloyd had said, there were flowers here.

When Nino had a decent handful of columbines, the last of the bleeding hearts and some pinks, she began to think about heading back. Her brothers must be getting at least a i little /i worried and she was getting hungry. The sun was low in the sky, casting an orange glow on the lake. She gazed out at the water, taken by the beauty.

As she turned back to the tree Lloyd and Linus were waiting at, she caught a glimpse of something blood red, peeking through the pink, green and magenta. Intrigued, Nino veered off course to see. Nestled in the dip between hills, in the center of ring of mushrooms.

Now Nino knew something was off, mushrooms didn't start until autumn. The flower, however, was unlike any she'd seen before.

Waxy in texture and red like blood, it rose perfectly from the ground, just the right length. It was just too tempting. Although even Sonia advised against stepping into fairy circles of toadstools and mushrooms, this flower would make a wonderful centerpiece.

Nino stepped into the circle, and then stepped out, glancing around. She closed one eye, and then the other. The lands around her looked the same. She tried peeking through the corner of her eye. No little people, no monsters, no trolls were coming to snatch her away. Reassuring herself of this, Nino re-entered the ring, one foot outside the border, confident that her brothers would come to her aid if she screamed loud enough.

She reached out to the center of the fairy ring, grasping the stem of the perfect flower at its base. Nino grunted. This one was a particularly stubborn flower. Unconsciously, she stepped entirely inside the circle and set down her bouquet. She began to stab the stem at its base with her fingernails, being careful not to damage the flower too much. With a snapping noise, it came loose.

Hours had passed at the tree. Lloyd stood up and stretched.

"I'll let you carry the empty bottle," he told Linus, cracking his neck. "It's your birthday."

Linus frowned at the flask, now devoid of any contents. "My birthday's not for the next few months."

"Exactly," Lloyd confirmed. He scanned the hillside in the fading light. "Where's our lass?"

"Nino?" Linus scratched the back of his head. "Haven't seen her."

"Of course not," replied the swordmaster irritably. "She hasn't come back yet. If Sonia doesn't care, father will be furious and that's not fun."

"Okay, why don't we go look for her?" Linus glared, exasperated.

"That's what I'm i saying /i ," Lloyd sighed. "You are an idiot sometimes."

"Me?!" Linus said, standing.

There wasn't much of a conversation after that. Lloyd set off close to the tree line of the forest, whereas Linus combed the lake.

"Nino!" echoed throughout the area in two voices.

Linus began to get nervous, something unusual for him. He gritted his teeth, trying to not think of all the ways a little girl could meet her death at the arms of a lake. There was drowning and the hypothermawhatsit Ursula and Uncle Jan were always warning about, as well as selkies and the cucumber-lovers and nereids with grudges against human girls. Many people discounted these, but the Reed family knew better than that. . . yes, it was possible to meet your death from these causes.

Lloyd did not let those possibilities haunt him. Nino wouldn't be so stupid as to wander into the lake or not be able to recognize a selky straight out, not when they'd painstakingly described one to her. As if to assure him, the wind picked up, causing Nino's favorite blue cloak to flap in the wind, a distinctly different color from the grass. He sighed in relief.

"Linus!" he called down to him. "I found her!"

Linus appeared to be relieved as well and made his way up the hill to them. Lloyd approached his stepsister to find that she was sleeping within a fairy ring. He clucked his tongue.

"Nino, lass, you're just begging for the fair folk to take you," he said, touching her shoulder to wake her. He jerked it back. "God, you're cold as ice. Are you sick? Nino? Nino?"

Asleep. Nino made a "mmm" sound and breathed out. Lloyd removed his coat and wrapped it around her freezing body. Linus finally arrived, panting.

"St. Elimine, that's a steep hill," he said. "But it's a blessing we found her. I was getting worried."

"Yeah," Lloyd said, picking her up. "Look, she's fast asleep. Must've had more to drink than we thought, huh?"

"Yeah," Linus said. "Let's get home."


	3. III The Discovery

III. The Discovery

The brothers Reed woke at dawn, like always, to train against each other. It ended in a yelling match that roused half the base, including a disgruntled Ursula who singed both of them with a well-aimed Bolting from her bedroom window. Ursula, normally reserved in manner, did not function quite the same in the mornings.

"Can't you two idiots find a better time to argue?" she said, snapping the tome shut. "I wasted two perfectly good spells on you louts! Curs! Ruffians!"

"Ah, c'mon, Ursley," Linus tried appealing to her better nature from behind his shield. Lloyd was cowering with him. "We're not that bad!"

There was a crack and a burst of light. Two stories up, Ursula lowered her arm, glowering at them and the newly blackened circle in the ground. She was still wearing her silk nightgown, and had been so perturbed she hadn't bother to find a robe to put over it before yelling at the brothers.

"You look nice today!" Lloyd tried. It usually worked with female members of the Fang. Ursula blasted them both with Bolting again, each.

"You bastards," Ursula swore, her voice low and deadly. "That's my last Bolting spell."

Carefully, Linus and Lloyd stood up, Linus still hiding behind his shield a bit. Lloyd picked up his sword. They'd dropped their weapons in the scramble to avoid Ursula's keen eye and magics.

"Well, at least she can't attack us anymore," Lloyd muttered. There was the sound of fluttering paper and a thunk as the tome, now useless, hit Lloyd's head. He sighed. "Never mind."

Uncle Jan's food bell rang for all early rising Fangs. Lloyd and Linus hurried out of Ursula's range, hoping that some silence would placate her.

The only ones up at this ungodly hour were themselves, Brendan, Legault, Uhai, Uncle Jan and that Ephidel character that never slept. He was new, one of Sonia's additions, along with Jaffar and Ursula.

The general consensus was that he was damn creepy.

"Morning, dad," Linus waved, stretching. Uncle Jan buzzed by, bearing a tray with god-knows-what on it.

"No weapons at the table," he reminded. Linus and Lloyd immediately unbelted their swords and leaned them against the wall next to Uhai's bow and quiver, Legault's knives and Brendan's axes.

"Morning Linus, morning Lloyd," Brendan greeted, taking his seat at the head of the table. "Where's my girls?"

"Sonia said something about not wanting to be awake the same time as the chickens and Nino just wouldn't rise," Lloyd shrugged. "And Ursula's awake, she's just being disagreeable this morning."

"Yes, I heard that," Brendan chuckled. "She's a character, isn't she? But a nice girl, deep down."

Linus snorted and Lloyd laughed straight out, not bothering to hold it in.

"She's always smiling," Uncle Jan said, nodding. "That's always good."

"It's because she's happy," Legault said, cleaning his fingernails with the knife he hadn't put away. "Happy to see you go up in flames."

Even Uhai laughed at that. Brendan gave in and admitted it was true, but Uncle Jan, ever the kindly one, insisted that somewhere, somehow, Ursula had some good qualities by comparing her to other in the Four Fangs.

"She's tough, like Linus," he pointed out. Uncle Jan set a plate in front of him. "And we all know Linus is soft, deep down. And reserved in manner, like Uhai."

"Whatever," Linus grumbled. He began to eat immediately.

"And she makes jokes like Legault," Uncle Jan said. He set a plate in front of Lloyd and Legault. "She loves you all, at heart."

"She threatened to geld me and Linus," Lloyd said darkly. "That's not love."

"Sure it is!" Legault laughed, cleaning his knife on his pants. "She was sad when you left. Moping and sighing . . ."

Lloyd didn't answer; he was eating. Uncle Jan's morning dumplings were better than anyone else's, barring Brendan's first wife. However, there was some spite in the way he simultaneously chewed and glared. Legault took this as leave to continue as he sliced the dumpling on his plate.

". . . and Nino told me," Legault said in a conspiring tone. "That she was sure. In fact, she was going to ask her, just yesterday."

"Hm," Brendan wondered aloud. "Where is our little girl? She's usually up before you, Jan."

Uncle Jan tsked. "You're right. Our Nino isn't under my feet this morning. She must've been tired last night . . ."

"Really tired, me and Lloyd found her sleeping out in the field," Linus added, finishing his food. You could only eat one dumpling per meal or you'd probably explode.

"I'll go check on her," Lloyd offered. He grabbed his sword on the way out and returned it to its place at his side.

The base was finally starting to wake up. He passed many of his underlings, each nodding or expressing a greeting. Nino's room was precariously close to Ursula's, something he'd have to look out for. He approached Nino's door. She had decorated it with some paint she'd won at a fair they had gone to before the trip, but this was the first time he'd seen the design in good light.

"Flowers," Lloyd said, remembering how easily he and Linus distracted her. He rapped on the door twice. "Nino! Nino, lass! You've been abed for the last hour, the rest of us are up!"

There was no answer. Lloyd pushed the door open. The room was dark. He walked in, and opened the curtains to let some light in. Nino, a lump in her bedcovers, did not move. He reached out to shake her shoulder. Instead of his stepsister's thin, solid arm, Lloyd's hand squished into the eiderdown with a squelching, wet noise.

"What . . .?" Lloyd murmured to himself. He stripped the cover from the bed. Underneath, there was no Nino.

A block of ice sat melting in the now soaked bed, surrounded by grass and Nino's clothing.

"Shit!"

"What the hells is going on, Lloyd, I'm trying to sleep," Ursula groaned, her smooth voice deadly with agitation. She slinked out of her room and into Nino's, her features twisted into a regal scowl. "What's wrong?"

She peered over Lloyd's shoulder and gasped. "N-nino? Where is she? What's wrong?"

Lloyd gripped the heavy, sodden eiderdown and retraced yesterday mentally, remembering how cold Nino was to the touch. How he had found her, asleep in the grass . . . in the fairy ring . . .

"No," he muttered, stepping back. Ursula squeaked; he had bumped into her.

"Why is there ice there?" Ursula demanded, dancing out of the way, into the hall. Lloyd followed her, closing the door.

"I need to find Linus," Lloyd said, a panicked tone in his voice. "Nino . . .!"

"What's wrong, Lloyd?" asked a new voice, coming around the hall. "Is there something the matter with my daughter?"

Thinking quickly, Lloyd threw the (freezing) blanket over Ursula's head and wrapped her in it before she could protest. Now indiscernible except for the feet, he scooped her up before she could move. He dashed past a surprised Sonia before she could get a look.

"Nothing, Sonia," he said briskly, his voice fading as he ran down the hall. "Nino's got a fever. She needs to see the doctor. Me and Linus'll take her!"

"O . . .kay . . ." Sonia blinked, and then shrugged it off. She continued down the hall and knocked on Ursula's door. "Ursula? Are you awake yet?"

When there was no answer, she sighed. "Slug-a-bed."

Ursula, however much she wanted to curse him and his line, was prevented by the blanket Lloyd held taut over her mouth as he ran. She began to have trouble breathing, as well.

"Linus, we've gotta take i Nino /i to the doctor," Lloyd said sharply, passing him in the hall. Linus turned around and followed him, breezing past their father and Legault, who were innocently exiting the mess hall.

"Why what's wrong?" Linus asked, genuinely concerned. "Is she sick?"

Lloyd remained silent until they were safely at the gate. The base was made from an old manse that they'd reconstructed into a fortress. Lloyd set the bundle down and then backed away. It struggled for a while and then broke out. Ursula was on her feet and snarling as best she could without out actually losing her temper.

"How dare you," she accused haughtily, before Linus gagged her with his hand.

"What's going on?" he hissed.

"Can't you tell?" Lloyd said sarcastically. "Our sweet little Nino has turned into Ursula."

i "What?" /i 

"Of course not, moron," Lloyd said, turning to leave. "I'll explain on the way. We have to go find her!"

Linus pushed Ursula to one side and chased after his brother. "Hey, wait up!"

Ursula watched them go, standing in the wind in her nightgown, freezing cold and damp. She turned to hear the sounds of every other Black Fang, wakened and active. Making her decision, she turned and followed them, barefoot and unarmed, screaming at the top of her lungs. Pride goeth before a fall, she supposed.

"Lloyd! Linus! You get back here this instant!" she bellowed.

Ursula followed them to the lakeside. Despite her elegance compared to the rest of the organization, she was a mountain girl, born and raised. She had visited a lake similar to this one, near her hometown and retained clear memories of running barefoot in over the grass. It still hurt her feet and by the time the Reed brothers stopped, she was panting and sweat-soaked.

"Ursula?" Lloyd asked no one as he saw her approaching. Had she run, the entire hour-long walk, just to wreak her long-awaited vengeance?

Yes.

She tackled him to the ground, hands around his neck, trying to choke him. Linus immediately set about getting the enraged woman off of his brother.

"Lloyd Reed, what in god's name were you thinking?" she demanded. "I could've died!"

"He's gonna die, get off!" Linus said, pulling at her arms.

"And Nino! How could you let her be taken away like that?!" Ursula accused, her temper dying into her usual chilliness. Linus finally managed to pry her away, half tossing her backwards. "Oof!"

"Wait," Lloyd said, sitting up. He rubbed the area around his throat and coughed. "You know what happened to her?"

"Of course," Ursula said, acquiring her normal, cool demeanor. "In her place was a block of ice. Isn't it obvious?"

Ursula held out her hand, using her other arm to guard her chest. "But first, give me your coat, I'm cold."

Grudgingly, Lloyd removed his coat and gave it to Ursula, who slipped it on immediately and held it closed with her hands.

She recounted a frighteningly similar story from her home village as they approached the fairy ring's old location.

There were told tales of children foolish enough to step into fairy rings who were carried away by trolls and goblins, Ursula explained. Some tales were of babies stolen from an unblessed cradle, young virgins stolen from their fields and kitchens, but they all held one feature in common. Left in their place were copies, identical children made of wood, other goblins, and sometimes even ice. With wooden children or goblin replacements, all you needed to do would be to throw them in the fire or into a well, but by the time ice children were identified . . .

"When ice children are left, there is nothing you can really do to get the child back," Ursula told them, chill in her voice. "The ice melts quickly. As a child, one of my playmates was stolen away by them."

"We have to bring her back," Linus said, angry already. "Don't say we can't. She's our little sister, and no goblin's gonna take her."

"What do they do with children?" Lloyd asked. He had always been concerned with the monsters of the lake, the ones that had almost destroyed his family years ago. It hadn't occurred to him that there were other malicious creatures in the forests and the hills that they needed to look out for.

Ursula shrugged. "Eat them, weave them into clothes, play with them like dolls," she listed on her hand. "There were so many stories, I was never sure which were true."

Lloyd glanced at Ursula to see if there was any remorse or grief for her lost friend. She was looking away, he couldn't see her face.

"I'm sorry."

Linus knelt at the fairy ring, examining it carefully. "Lloyd, what's this?" He lifted a wilting flower; a bleeding heart, one of Nino's favorites.

"Nino . . ." Lloyd murmured. He walked ahead a few feet before finding another flower, this time a columbine. "There's a trail! Nino left us a trail!"


	4. IV The Trials

IV. The Trials

The trails of dead flowers was easy enough to track. It led into the woods, which Lloyd and Linus had unconsciously avoided. It wasn't that they were wary of the creatures there; it was just now that they'd been awoken to those dangers. They just hadn't ever thought of exploring the woods themselves, not when Uhai and his men had so very thoroughly and reported nothing.

Trees were tall here and pine cones and needles crunched underfoot. Ursula was seriously considering heading back, for her bare feet weren't tough enough anymore to take the perilous terrain. She pulled the coat tighter around her, a chill brushing past her and wiped her left foot from needles.

"This is it," Linus said, returning from ahead. He tripped something in the ground that he hadn't seen on the way there. "There aren't anymore flowers in this direction."

"Maybe here," Lloyd pointed to where the branches of a low sapling were broken. Ursula's eyes widened.

"No," she said, carefully picking her way over the forest floor. "Look. This wasn't here before . . ."

Ursula knelt on the ground, brushing away the forest debris. Linus backed up. She cleared the needles, thrown around slapdash-like, covering a . . . a bleeding heart, caught in a crack in stone.

"Now that's weird," Linus observed. He brushed away more needles. "Lloyd, get over here. Help me out with this."

Lloyd squatted next to Ursula and began to clear the area, brushing away needles and cones and all sorts of things. The stone, as long as Linus was tall, and as wide as a sword's length, rose an inch off the ground, but was embedded deeper. Carved into the surface were words, gaunt and haunting.

i Small and thin, a mourning place

Youth in earth, a shameless waste. /i 

"That's . . ." Ursula trailed. "A bit morbid . . ."

"What is it?" Linus asked.

"A riddle," Ursula murmured. "Youth in earth . . ."

"A mourning place, that could be a church or a graveyard," Lloyd muttered thoughtfully. "Probably a graveyard, since it mentions the earth . . ."

"A child's grave," Linus said, suddenly. "Small and thin. And isn't the death of a child a waste?"

The three watched the stone. Noting that Linus was not standing on the stone, Ursula stood up.

"A child's grave," she enunciated.

As if responding, there was a rumble and a great crack as the rock split under her feet. Lloyd, being closer, reached out and pulled her from the dividing stone before she fell into the gaping hole forming as the stone split. The two pieces moved aside, somehow polarized.

"My god . . ." Ursula murmured. Lloyd released her and stepped forward. "I knew it existed. It's like in the stories . . ."

"Is Nino down here?" he said, peering into the darkness. He could see a stone floor, and a little ways further, a narrow stairway, almost too small for him to fit.

"Yeah," Linus said confidently, vaulting into the pitch. He looked up at his brother. "Hey! Let's go!"

"Linus, wait!" Ursula cried. He was already squeezing through the stairway, somehow. Lloyd prepared to follow him, but Ursula blocked him with an extended arm. "Wait . . . Lloyd, stand up for a moment and close your eyes."

Somewhat confused, he stood up, but did not close his eyes.

"Hurry, Linus'll get into trouble," he said, agitated to move. Ursula silenced him. He closed his eyes. He could hear her muttering some kind of charm.

"They who forge images, they who steal and bewitch, the malevolent eyes that trick and tease, spirit of heaven dispel their power, spirit of earth reveal their lies," she recited, her voice somehow resonating. She hesitated, then toughened her resolve. Reaching to pull his head down to her level, she kissed one eye, then the other, and released him, backing up.

"What was that for?" Lloyd asked, opening his eyes again, flinching from sudden contact. He shut them tightly, not even a moment to fit in a spare blink. A thin jolt of pain shot through his eyes. As it faded, he squinted at Ursula, who was standing and looking vaguely interested and a tad concerned.

"I gave you the ability to see properly down there," she explained. "I've never used that charm before, so I had no idea what would happen. Did it hurt?"

He didn't say a word, but gave her a confused, disbelieving look, as if what had happened had not. She ushered him into the hole. Lloyd jumped in, kicking up dust where he landed. There were more markings on the walls, words and warnings he had not seen prior to entering. The pit was deeper than he thought; to get out, he'd have to stand on Linus' shoulders. Lloyd craned his neck to see Ursula, who was crouching next to the edge, wrapped in his coat. Would he ever get that back?

"Go!" she commanded. "And don't eat anything or tell them that you see them through both eyes."

He nodded, and without a word disappeared down a staircase that now seemed so much wider. Ursula sighed and bit her lip.

". . . be careful . . ."

Linus had a difficult time believing his eyes.

The stairway, narrow and plain, led into a great hall, finer than the king of Bern's or maybe even Etruria's. Certainly something to behold. Had Nino been taken here? The hall branched off into three smaller halls. Which one?

He heard the shriek of a child, coming from the hall on the left. Fearing the worst, Linus wasted no time in dashing down the path, ignoring all finery until the smaller hall let out into a wide, open room, hung with tapestries and rich cloth. Everywhere, there were looms and spindles.

In the center of the room was a tiny woman, gold-haired and beautiful, singing and weaving on the ugliest of the looms.

i A goblin. /i 

Strange, he'd imagined them to be a little more threatening. This tiny woman possessed arms like sticks and the frailest body he'd ever seen, even on the malnourished children in some of the worst places he'd ever visited.

Even as he approached her, she did not stop her work. Linus tried to catch her attention and coughed. Gracefully, the goblin woman turned. Her eyes widened; Linus noticed that they were no color he could name.

"What is wrong with you?" she demanded, her high-pitched voice making him cringe. "Stupid trollses! They don't know how to follow the leastest orderses. I told you to fetch someses more yarn!"

"I-I'm sorry . . ." Linus muttered, shocked. The little woman mistook him for a troll.

"Hurry ups," she said, turning back to her work. "These childses are harder to sew when they're dead."

She's weaving children into clothing, Linus realized, disgusted. He watched the little woman's work carefully. She did seem to be weaving around something invisible and now that he was paying attention, it was squirming in her hands. The little woman was an expert it seemed.

She turned to yell at him again. In one swift, angry moment, he drew his sword and lopped off her head. The blood spurted out, staining her tapestry to reveal a half-dead child in the center of the pattern, flat as the cloth, but strangely tangible. The child's head lolled and he stopped struggling.

"What?" Linus gasped, trying very hard not to retch now. The child looked at him.

"You killed her? Maritha, the Weaving Witch?" he murmured. The child looked up to the ceiling and closed his eyes. "Thank god."

"Who are you?" Linus frowned, stepping nearer. "M'name's Linus."

"I'm nameless to her, but once I was called Rats," said the child in the tapestry. "I lived in the city. She lured me down here using chocolate."

"Rats?"

"On account of being worse than a colony of dirty rats, says my sister," Rats sighed. "At least I think she says it. Time passes funny in here."

"Funny?" Linus asked, confused. "How so?"

"Like, you walk in and it's fifteen minutes for you, but five-and-fifty in the outside world . . ."

Linus tried to imagine Ursula as an old woman, waiting fifty-five years for him and Lloyd to bring back Nino. She'd be wearing that coat for a long time.

"I don't have fifty-something years," he said coarsely. "I need to find my sister."

"Well, before I became dress-fodder, I was her Ladyship's cup-holder," Rats shrugged. His body retained motion within the cloth. "I know this place fairly well."

"Her Ladyship?" Linus raised an eyebrow. "Who's that?"

"Eh, well," Rats crossed his arms. "I can't really say her name; she's got ears everywhere, but she can't listen to everything, right? Her Ladyship listens for her name. She's in charge in these parts."

"So this lady's got some magic power that lets her hear her name? Great, I'm real scared," Linus yawned. Rats scowled, irritated.

"Hey! This ain't a laughing matter!" he said dejectedly. "When she hears her name, she comes running, and when her Ladyship comes to call, it's never a good thing."

"What does that mean?" Linus said suspiciously.

"Think of the absolute i worst /i woman in the world," Rats instructed him.

An image of Sonia fluttered through his mind, laughing and draped over his father's arm. Worst woman in the world. Right.

"Now double her, triple that and give her ultimate power in her domain," Rats said gravely from his tapestry. "That is what her Ladyship is. She's a duchess of Hell, the whore of the gods, queen of sin and squalor and that is me being nice."

"Sounds like my stepmother," Linus commented.

"Mine, too," Rats agreed, and in that moment Linus gained the deepest of respect and sympathy for the two-dimensional child. "Why are you here, anyway?"

"My sister," Linus told him. "Her name is Nino."

"Never 'eard of her," Rats said. His tone was genuinely sympathetic. "Poor lass."

"No," Linus said, indignant. "Me and my brother, Lloyd, we're here to save her."

"Psha," Rats snorted. "You're not the first. But her Ladyship'll win, if you go by yourself. Where's this Lloyd character, anyway?"

"He's . . ." Linus realized that he'd left his brother and Ursula at the doorway. Smart thinking, Linus. "Coming. He's coming."

"I'm so sure," Rats raised an eyebrow. He paced within the confines of the cloth. "I hate her Ladyship. And you must love your sister a helluva a lot to come for her in this wretched place."

Linus stared at Rats somewhat uneasily. Rats looked at him, standing feet apart, hands on hips.

"You don't know this place like I do. You don't seem to have Eyes, either--"

"I've got eyes," Linus retorted sharply.

"No, Eyes," Rats corrected. "They help you See what's actually there. You don't have them. All this stuff, it's fake. Made to look like this by her Ladyship's power, but it's not real."

"I see," Linus said, thinking. Rats laughed.

"Or rather, you don't," he snickered at his own joke. "Here, take me down. I'll be your Eyes. We'll find your sister together."

Lloyd took the right passage. It was as good as any, and he was confident that his brother, however idiotic, could handle any dangers until he found him.

There were warnings, written in some unknown kind of ink, scraped into the stone, embedded in the walls. An ominous air, heavy and damp with tense fear, existed in this place. He felt a humid, terrible heat blast his face.

A little ahead of him, Lloyd saw a great gap, revealing a room turned red from fire and smoke. The insides of the room twisted themselves from the sheer heat of it. A kitchen, very much like Uncle Jan's, only giant-sized. Hanging from the ceiling, which was high over head, was the dim, obscure figure of a cage.

Lloyd entered the fairy kitchen, ignoring the frantic warnings. Over the bubbling and screeching of ordinary, but enormous, kitchen din, Lloyd could hear a child's voice--or was it children?--shouting and crying and wailing.

As he drew nearer, he saw that the cage, as he had feared, was full of children. A small girl pointed at him, saying something in the tongue of the Western Isles. The others reached through the bars at him, their words jumbled. Lloyd knew, from just the tone, what they were asking of him.

One addressed him by throwing a lump of bread at his head, a seven-year-old with long, violet hair. Her aim was remarkably good.

"Please!" she shrieked. It stood out from some of the louder children who were Sacaen, taught to speak in their native tongues first. "Please, save us! The fat lady's gonna be back any second!"

"S'ehs gniog ot tae su!" cried a Sacaen boy. In his arms was a smaller child, wrapped in green. "Evas ym rehtorb!"

"Please," an Etrurian girl begged. "She'll eat us! Mama Cuchina will cook us and then--"

Lloyd stepped back, examining the cage from afar. It dangled from a chain, swinging only five feet above the floor. A great, flaming lock held it shut and the children were keeping quite clear of it. Nino was not among them. Still, she very well could have been next in line . . .

An earth-shaking boom made the children scream louder. It was succeeded by another, and another, like footsteps. Lloyd looked around quickly, scanning for a hiding spot. On the floor were some towering containers, much like the clay ones Uncle Jan used to store rice and the like. He dashed behind one and then peeked around it to see the feared cook, Mama Cuchina.

Like everything else, she was enormous, two times the height of his father. Her black hair, her only fair feature, was barely enough to cover her head, although it seemed to be three or four feet in length. Everything else was hard to look at without gagging. Mama Cuchina was squat despite her great height and puddled out in the middle, like a top going both ways. Her skirt and apron fell around her legs, very much like a tablecloth. Her skin was a greenish-grey and mottled with warts and spots.

Mama Cuchina crossed the room, ignoring the children, to the stoves, and started to attend to whatever was boiling there. Lloyd could see, at her side, were several keys hanging from a ring. Turning, the fairy cook leered at her captives.

"G'morning, me little ones," she drawled, grinning happily. She tottered over to them, reaching for her keys. Lloyd eyed her hands, watching the one carrying a knife larger than himself with some concern, waiting for the one with the keys to unlock the cage. With a click, the flames on the lock died away and she removed it. "Mama Cuchina's come to make her Ladyship's breakfast."

Mama Cuchina reached inside to grip the first girl, the purple haired one who'd spoken to him first. Within a blink, Lloyd's sword carved a bleeding red gash in Mama Cuchina's grey calf. She bellowed, shocked and in pain. The little girl scrambled back into the cage, pulled up by a Sacaean child.

" i What? /i " the fairy cook screeched, gasping at the wound and then at the tiny thing that caused it, already darting back. Blood stained her leg and the floor, pooling out.

Lloyd looked for the next opening to attack. She lumbered toward him, favoring her good leg. Should he try to wound that one too? Mama Cuchina seemed to remember her knife. She lunged at him before he could decide. Lloyd tumbled out of the way, trying not to see how the knife had cleaved the stone floor. Tiny chips scattered, but Mama Cuchina just pulled her knife from the ground and chased after him, bleeding profusely.

Narrowly dodging the next swing of her massive kitchen knife, he raised the sword high. A light, brighter than Ursula's Thunder and Bolting spells, shone from it, zigzagging like lightning to Mama Cuchina's knife arm. She screeched, cursing up storms, doubled over, dropping her weapon to favor her scorched limb. Lloyd moved away quickly, seemingly splitting into five or six different people in a familiar form. He reappeared, among his dopplegangers at her neck, slicing it wide open.

The blood exploded onto the floor, but never touched him. It steamed away with her death, the hissing sound blending with the kitchen noise. What had been on the ground seeped into cracks and left the floor strangely dry, not even the rust-colored stains he was used to seeing.

The body crinkled, bone-dry. He wiped the blade of the Light Brand on her clothing, ignoring the crunch of bones, brittle and dusty now.

"Hey!" cried the violet-haired girl. "Help us get down!"

Sheathing the magic sword, Lloyd crossed the bare floor to the cage. The door was swinging wide open.

"Sit down on the edge, one of you," he commanded. The violet-haired girl obeyed immediately. She was tinier than Nino, and not harder to slide down safely.

The next child--the Sacaean and his baby brother--was a bit more difficult. He was large for a nine-year-old, which the violet haired girl, Brunie, said was his age. Udari, which was his name, handed down his little brother, thanking him in whatever dialect it was. Brunie took the baby, and Udari escaped the cage with Lloyd's help. Seeing that it was a relatively short drop, some of the older, larger children jumped down themselves, while Lloyd saw to the smaller, more frightened ones.

Brunie thanked him, after all the children were safely on the floor.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Lloyd Reed," he replied. "Why did that . . . woman want to cook you?"

"Her Ladyship eats children," Brunie stated, instantly. "Gobbles them down, just like in the story. We've got to run, I know a way out. That's why I was put here, for very nearly escaping. But first . . ."

Brunie looked around, cautious. "I wanna tell you something important. Her Ladyship is kind of like . . . the Queen of Bern only it's not Bern, it's this place. She gets her power . . ." Brunie lowered her voice, gesturing for Lloyd to come closer. ". . . from her i hair /i ."

"Her hair?" Lloyd repeated. Brunie and the other children nodded and murmured in agreement.

"That's right," Udari muttered in a rough voice. He was cradling the baby now. Brunie returned it to him as soon as he had touched ground.

"Cut it, or burn it," Brunie suggested. Vengeance sparkled in her eyes. "It's great and golden and long. You can't miss it! After her hair's shorn, she's just a normal fae woman, like Mama Cuchina. You could kill her!"

"Alright," Lloyd said, contemplating this new information. Nino was being kept by a goblin queen. "Have any of you met a girl? She's twelve or thirteen or roundabouts. Her name's Nino."

Udari's eyes sparked. "Aye! The mageling 'er Ladyship brought in. I saw 'er before I and Shin were taken to the kitchen."

"I see," Lloyd nodded. Closer! "Is that all? Where was she?"

"In a dungeon, one of them," Udari admitted. "Dunno which."

"Thank you," he said. "Are you sure that you'll get out fine?"

"Uh-huh!" Brunie grinned, leading the group away, back the way he himself had come. "I got a bit of the talent myself--me and Ursley used to play with fire all the time! Don't worry!"

Lloyd stared after the gaggle of children, and then at the great door. There was nothing left except the heat of the kitchen. The soup would over boil, he thought ironically. It would've driven Uncle Jan mad.

". . .Ursley?"


	5. V The Queen

V. The Queen

When she had reached for the flower, Nino heard Lloyd's voice in the opposite direction of the tree she'd left him at. Hills blocked the way, when she turned to look the for the tree. Nino assumed that he had gone around, through the evergreens, since that's where he was standing.

"Nino!" she heard him call. "Nino, lass! Get over here, I've found something!"

Nino waved back and nodded, running to him. She didn't noticed a bleeding heart slip from her hands.

"Coming!"

Nino broke out into a run. She'd only covered a little more distance when her foot caught on something. She stood up, dusting off. She could hear Lloyd laughing good-naturedly at her clumsiness. She supposed she would've done the same, if Lloyd ever tripped. A columbine fell to the ground unnoticed.

Nino's grip on the flowers slackened some as she approached her stepbrother. Several fell out, and when he pointed this out, she realized that she only had half. Nino sighed.

"I guess I'll just give up on the flower idea," she said, drooping. As they walked Nino pulled the flowers apart slowly one by one and tossed them to the side. They stood out on the needle floor, bright oddly shaped petals and stems.

She still had the waxy red one, though.

"Hey, Lloyd?" Nino asked, lifting the flower to her face. She didn't look at him, but knew he was listening intently anyway. "What do you think of Ursula?"

"What?" Lloyd asked, genuinely curious. "Who?"

"Ursula," Nino prompted, amused and tittering. "C'mon, quit playing dumb. You know her."

"What do you mean?" he smiled, and then the ground opened underneath her. Arms made of golden strings reached and bound her ankles and arms, dragging her into the earth. A thick rope twisted around her neck, choking her. Lloyd wasn't smiling anymore. In his place, though, was the grin of shadowy, beautifully translucent person.

Nino reached out to touch a stray rope before it bound her further. The golden-bright threads ground and splayed across her fingers. Looking back up, the deep shadows and brilliance, her breath tightened in her chest.

i Hair. /i 

When Nino awoke again, she wasn't alone. The translucent person made of light and dark sat at her side on a wide, silk-covered bed. She coughed immediately, to shake the constricted feeling in her throat and then gasped at her surroundings. Across the walls and furniture were ornate, delicately woven tapestries depicting both horrific and beautiful scenes. A brutal man-hunt, the burning of three staked women, a mother singing her children to sleep, the extravagant feast hall of a king during Hartmastide--anything she could imagine.

The person, now clearly a woman decked in pure white and flowers twisted around her arms and hair, stared down at her. Nino shrunk back violently, scrunching the sheets. The woman blinked, her wide and unnaturally blue eyes stuck in shock. Her hair was bright and long, trailing across the Caledonian carpet like a golden fan for a good six feet. She reached out for Nino, which just made things worse; this woman's hands were deformed with a fourth joint and her nails were long and green with paint.

"Lass!" she said in Lloyd's voice. The woman coughed, as if she had forgotten she'd been using it. Her voice changed, lighter and higher, cloying like milky chocolate from Etruria. "Lass, why are you afraid of me?"

"Y-you're not my brother!" Nino stammered, still crawling away. The weight of her Elfire tome was heavy in her cloak.

"Of course not," said the impossibly shining woman. She leaned even closer. Nino panicked, staring into her unblinking, terrifying blue eyes. Her face was perfectly shaped and each feature was proportionally made and set. She still wasn't beautiful. This inhuman woman was i trying /i too hard.

"You tricked me!" Nino argued further. Her Elfire tome was there, in reach! She could put her hand there and just chant . . . "You pretended to be my brother!"

The unnatural woman smiled so softly and kindly, Nino almost forgave her. "I am the Fae Queen, the lady of forest and field, lake and stream. Please, accept my humblest apologies, Nino of the Fang."

"I . . ." Nino stuttered, relaxing her guard long enough for the Fae Queen to reach for her arm lovingly. It took only a moment realize where she'd remembered that tone, that expression. Uncle Jan used it on her when he was trying to make her eat vegetables. She slapped the elongated hand away, shuddering at the touch. "Don't come near me!"

The goblin queen shrunk back, angry. Her face distorted, turning green-grey, mottled with age. Nino's clothing and hair shuffled with the force of her fury; it exploded around her.

i "WHAT?!" /i her Ladyship shrieked. Streams of gold dug into the bed, the floor, wrapping around her arms Nino screamed. "How . . . dare you! You will be punished!"

Frozen in fear, she forgot about her tome, about Linus and Lloyd, about Ursula and her mother. The world faded around her. She was going to die. No one knew she was here. Her brothers wouldn't save her, no matter how loudly she called out.

Tiny creatures emerged from the cracks in the floor, black like soot. They crawled on her skin and cloak, giving off a searing stench, and smothering her with an uncomfortably hot, scratching of feet. Their eyes were hard black chips, set into the faces of demons.

And for a moment, Nino thought she had died.


	6. VI The King

VI. The King

"You got us lost, Rats," Linus stated bluntly, tossing the textile child over his shoulder. He gestured to the massive wall hangings. "I don't recognize a scrap of this."

"Maybe if I could i _see_ /i , you know, I'd be able to i _tell you where we are!_ /i " Rats replied spitefully.

Linus stepped further down the regal hall, eyeing everything with a bit of doubt. Rats had been described what the objects were really made from--paintings that were really just animal scratching on the walls, swords and coats of arms that were just sticks and stones tied together. The rich carpet, according to Linus' new companion, was made from the bodies of children that had come before him and died of starvation, trapped in the thread. It was real, the same way he was.

Nothing was sacred it seemed, and the more he heard about her Ladyship, the more he despised her. She had taken his sister, along with hundreds, maybe thousands, of other children over the years. Now, he wanted not only to save Nino, but to kill her kidnapper, the merciless and immoral goblin queen.

"Shut up, Rats," Linus barked. "You're giving me a headache."

"You talk like that to your brother?" Rats replied, his question echoing in the suddenly silent hall way. Linus didn't answer right away. Sure, he said some brusque things to Lloyd, but Lloyd was usually the one with the headache, the one listening to every little complaint. This must be what it was like, being the oldest brother.

"Nah," Linus said at last. Only a few scant seconds had passed, but the lull seemed to reveal everything. "Not all the time. He's too good to me."

"Must be," Rats snorted. "You're spoiled rotten."

That's not true, Linus thought, but didn't say. The Fangs led a hard life. He'd worked his way to the top by being the best, just like Lloyd had had to do. It was more likely for them to be the best, two of the Four Fangs, since they could learn from the great Brendan Reed directly as his sons. Of course, it was they themselves who had learned what _not _to do, at some personal cost.

Linus stopped his strain of thought and memory to stare at the massive edifice before him.

"Rats," he said, taking the cloth boy by the corners and hanging him straight out in front so he could see what Linus saw. "I'm looking at a giant stone door. It's engraved heavily with the design of a lord of some sort holding a sword of obvious power and some freakish goblin scrawl down the blade. The lord is surrounded by his vassals in full armor. Blocking out the sun is the face and torso of a beautiful, long-haired woman."

"Her Ladyship," Rats breathed. "I'm seeing the same thing, Linus. This is real. You can't change the appearance of a grave."

"A grave?" Linus raised an eyebrow, bundling Rats up again and haphazardly throwing him over his shoulder once more. Rats didn't complain for once. The carpet was a grave, too--this place was real only in death.

"Yeah. I never thought I'd see it," Rats said in awe. "The grave of the Fae King."

That there had once been a King, a _i his Lordship /i _, struck Linus as a terrible curiosity. Who had this king of goblins once been?

Neither he nor Rats could decipher the scratching, patternless fairy languages--Linus himself had some difficulty with human letters every once in a while and Nino, he knew for a fact, had never bothered with it. But the door to the tomb wasn't sealed, or if it was, sealed poorly. One of the vassals' hands jutted out, an obvious, ornamental doorknob.

Linus couldn't have thought of doing anything else but pull at the hand and swing the man-shaped door. It seemed so painfully obvious. Rats' objections came a moment too late as the dank, stale air overpowered them.

"Uh . . . " Rats groaned. "I can smell its stink through the cloth."

"It's just a tomb," Linus tried to shrug it away without gagging too hard. "Ugh--let's, let's just keep moving."

"What?! In there?!" Rats exclaimed, apparently disgusted. "It's befouled. Disgusting. The grave of the Fair King. No good comes from that."

"Shut up," Linus commanded and that was the end of it, since neither could speak as they ploughed deeper into the cavernous grave.

More stone vassals decorated the wall. The floor was a mosaic of a sea beast or perhaps a longboat of old, carved into the shape of a monster and decorated even further with geometries. It was hard to tell through the scattering of almost fully decayed bodies, some as large as a house, some smaller than child. Linus was loathed to touch them. Although he'd handled corpses before, mangled from battle, none were quite so terrifying.

From the center of the room rose a dull, greyish edifice, four times as tall as he, with the stairs leading up to the sarcophagus that must contain the king's remains. Unsure of what he might find, Linus held the tapestry of Rats to see. His beady little eyes widened but he shook his head. No dangers apparent. Linus threw Rat's over his shoulder again, gently setting foot on the first step. Nothing.

Another step. Yet another and another and nothing had happened. Gaining in confidence, Linus picked up speed, almost flying up the somehow unending stairs. The steps shrank into narrower platforms, until he stood on a ledge barely widen enough for his feet to balance. Rats whimpered. Linus strove not to look down, for the coffin's pedestal was much higher than he realized.

The lid was made from gold and encrusted with every jewel imaginable in any color under the sun. Linus recognized that the lid probably wasn't gold, but mere stone, and the jewels were probably studs of granite.

"We're going to _fall,_" Rats insisted, the fear forcing him to speak.

"What do you care?" Linus scoffed, although he too felt uneasy at such height. "You're already flat."

The Mad Dog took a moment to steady himself before digging his fingers beneath the lid's overhang. With a grunt and one swift motion, he pried it loose and let go. The golden slab skidded down the narrow steps accompanied by a chorus of racket; it began to tumble as it hit the wider steps and then a there was clear moment as the lid sailed down the side and thumped mightily on the ground. The corpses had conveniently cleared the way for it some decades ago.

The King blinked awake and rose.

Linus fell back in surprise, almost barking like a frightened hound. A skeletal, garishly decorated hand reached out for him and held him steady; the King had saved his life. Chills riveted down the young man's spine, and Rats fell an easy thirty feet to the floor to land folded across the decayed body of a giant bugbear. Linus could only tremble, in spite of himself.

"You," wailed his Lordship. His voice was deep and dead and his jaws seemed not to match his speech, just opening and closing with a grinding of bone on bone. "Hear me, human! I am Grendel, King of the Goblins, Lord of the Fair, and Master of Trolls! Grendel . . .!"

The King shook Linus' wrist, tightening his death grip even more and twisted to survey his surroundings. He moaned, mournful and terrifying. "Oh, woe--this is my army!? Despair, despair! Brought low, brought low by that wretch, that hag, that fiendish harpy!"

King Grendel returned his gaze to the frightened mortal within his clutches. He moved slowly, his tarnished bones lacking the muscle for quick movement. No skin hung to his face, surrounded by a cascade of mangy white hair clinging between his skull and his crown. The King still wore full armor and dress--his cape and tunic were of a good cloth, touched with gold along the edges. The bracers on his forearms clicked dully as he moved.

"You! You, human, shall avenge me," King Grendel commanded, his colorless eyes, miraculously intact, bugging out through his eye-holes. "Avenge my army. Oh, the years have passed, Lilith, but you remain standing. No more! I, your Grendel, hold the key to your downfall. Die, my traitorous wife! I will lie safe in my grave while you rot in our bed! The sword, the sword . . ."

The King loosened his hold on Linus' arm and immediately, he took a step down as his Lordship began to stand in his stone coffin. Slowly, the two descended, Linus wide-eyed and mute. The King's remaining flesh began to tear and fall off as he moved, the rotted muscle and remaining innards showing clear. Across his front was a diagonal slash from a giant of a sword that had dug into his very being. He groaned and creaked as he walked.

Linus thought enough to reach down to collect Rats, but the poor child seemed shock-still and white; the fright had killed him, if he hadn't already been dead. The King glanced at the unfortunate creature unpityingly.

"Human . . . can you see?" the King turned, advancing ominously. Linus underestimated his height before. The King neared seven feet. The stink of death overwhelmed him.

He felt blind for a moment, stumbling back over a dwarf. His sight returned almost immediately but the presence of grime over his eyelids was unshakable. As Linus scrambled out of the tomb, he scratched at his face, using all his discipline not to riphis eyes from their sockets. The world around him was clearer, truer, but he couldn't care less.

King Grendel made to follow him out. Linus hadn't even looked over his shoulder to see; it was like nightmare monsters. They always followed you out.

The King's grave he shut without regret, no pity for the fallen lord. He'd probably been just as bad--the fact that her Ladyship was their common enemy wasn't grounds for an alliance. Linus kept running.

The halls looked different now, all bones and animal skin and decayed fish and spiders'websand blood on the walls. He didn't try to read them. All he wanted to do was find his brother and Nino and get the _hell out._ He was sick of fairies and the Queen and the lonely, hopeless, despairingatmosphere of her kingdom.

"_LLOYD!!"_ he bellowed. Linus' voice bounced and echoed back to him. _"LL--"_

Something tiny caught his boot and he fell hard.

----------

At first, he thought the shrillvoicebelonged to his mother. But no, Maria Reed, bless her departed soul, had spoken softly and hit hard, not the other way around. The soft taps rivaled even Nino's in lack of strength; Linus grunted and tried twisting out of the way.

He was bound, and could barely move his head, much less stand or even roll over. The little bugbears crowding around him were scarcely longer than his forearm, with grey, yellow or green stringy hair and little red caps. Linus swore a muffled oath through a gag. His hands felt asleep, tied behind him.

"Wake up, wake up, wake UP!" shrieked the diminutive brownie woman. Her skin was a dingy blue-grey. So the King had given him the eyes that Rats (bless his soul too) hadspoken of. No matter how beneficial it was to have them be his own,Linus was notsure that the means really made up for the ends."Wakie wake! Tell me, boy, how old? How stale are you?"

Linus didn't so much as answer as cuss unintelligibly. The little woman didn't care. "That's alright, we gonna eat you after she done. If she done."

The bugbears howled, laughing. The hag on his knees hopped down, cackling.

The cold clench of realization hit him then. He, Linus Reed, the Mad Dog of the Four Fangs, was going to die at the sadistichands of her Ladyship, a woman who was probably green.


	7. VII The Bird

Lloyd felt like he'd been running for hours. All the hallways looked the same, now, just cavernous grey stone, lit by some eerie power. There were few deviations to the path. Everything was the same. It wasn't his element. Stress was fine, heavy stress, creeping through the dark hallways of manors or crossing a stronghold of the target's power. Impending death was just an afterthought. But this was mad.

Weary from the exertion, he collapsed against a shapeless, blank wall. Lloyd speculated that he was too far deep into the world of the Fair Folk to see any more warnings from the human slaves or bones from dead prisoners and beasts.

He leaned his head back against the stone. Nino was further into this terrifying world of evil creatures than this, it wouldn't ever be so easy as her, panicked but safe, running around the corner, screaming for him, Linus, Father, Legault . . .

A year or so of watching, tailing, worrying, laughing, living with Nino had left all the Fangs (perhaps not Sonia or her similarly colored underlings) soft in the heart for her. Lloyd refused to believe that he may have to return to the base without her, in failure, for the first time since he was a just a little older than her, back when the base was nothing but a shepherd's hut on the hill at Argeshire . . .

"Stop that," he chastised himself, standing. "You don't even know if you can come back."

Lloyd looked right and left. Which way had he come anyway? Both passages looked the same. He groaned. Kneeling, he tried to determine the direction he'd come. The signs were minimal, only the disturbance of small bits of gravel his boots made as he ran.

_Thump-thump-thump._

Alert, his eyes snapped up, glancing right and left. It was the sound of a heavy man's footfalls. Linus, maybe? Trolls were supposed to be enormous, too, but it didn't sound as heavy as the massive Mama Cuchina. He was in plain sight, too. The very pebbles he'd been examining began to quake.

A flash of yellow rounding a corner _out from the middle of the wall_ bowled him over. Lloyd grunted and tumbled gracelessly to the ground. His hands extended to get a grip on his assailant, closing on fluffy, golden tail feathers. What appeared to be a gigantic bird continued to run wildly through the corridor.

It huffed and puffed, obviously quite shocked. Lloyd struggled to hold onto the creature as it ran, dragging him mercilessly against stone floor. The bird swung to a stop, twirling him into a wall, trying to shake him off or kill him. Lloyd's fingers still clung desperately for the feathers, and the bird was going insane, shaking and flailing with vigor.

"Cut—it—out!"

Lloyd grunted, finding his footing. He pounced on the beast-bird awkwardly, trying to gain the advantage, but the thing wouldn't stop moving. Lloyd kneed it again, disregarding any possible harm he was doing to the blasted thing. It gasped suddenly and something landed on the stone floor and skidded away.

A golden egg.

Lloyd and the bird froze at the same time and looked at each other. The bird had a human face atop its long neck, with a beak for nose and mouth. It looked sheepish.

"What in the name of God is _that_?" Lloyd asked, pointing accusingly to the shining egg. His other arm remained tight around the bird's fragile body. It shuddered at the mention of the Lord's name.

"Don't say dat. Iss an egg," the bird replied nasally, ruffling the yellow and white feathers of its neck. It regarded him rather defensively. "I got scared."

"My God . . ." Lloyd repeated, astounded. The bird snapped at him roughly, almost taking an eye out.

"Don't say dat," the bird squawked shrilly. Lloyd cringed, and ground his teeth harshly, but did not release the monstrosity.

"What are you?" Lloyd asked, trying to put as much distance as possible while still securing the creature thoroughly. He'd done more impossible things.

"I'm a goose," the self-proclaimed goose sniffed primly. This thing had more than eggs stuffed up its ass.

"No you're not. You're too big."

"How would you know? Have you ever seen a goose?"

"Yes," Lloyd said, losing patience. He was arguing with the biggest goose in the world. Ursula would be laughing at him, long and loud, with much pointing. "I used to herd them when I was little. And they were _definitely_ smaller."

Lloyd disregarded the creature's face; there was no way he was going to continue bickering with the fae bird for longer than he had to. He slipped the dagger from his boot awkwardly, glaring at it with the type of expression usually employed by ruffled nuns handling small children.

"How did you get here?" he began, pointing the knife edge to the bird's trembling neck. It seemed to have lost all inclination to struggle.

"I ran," it sniffed again, but it was punctured with a distressed gulp.

"That's not what I meant," Lloyd hissed.

"Den what do you mean?"

"I mean, can I go through there too?"

"Where too?"

"There!" he jerked his head to the seemingly solid wall.

"I don't know," the bird replied irritably. Lloyd pressured the edge against its feathery, stalk-like neck. It squawked once, a short, high noise and then clamped its beak shut.

"Tell me," Lloyd said, near pushed to the limits of his patience. "I'm looking for someone?"

The bird's frightened expression changed. "Who?"

"My sister," he said quickly. "Short, green haired lass. Twelve or thirteen years—human." Lloyd tacked on the last part so the damnable creature wouldn't confuse her with fae child.

"Oooh, do you mean da liddle one da good queen brought in?" da bird—the bird, Lloyd corrected himself mentally—cooed affectionately. "She was da most piddiful wretch—da queen stuffed her in da wight-pit, she did, until da liddle girl could behave."

A spark flashed behind Lloyd's eyes, lifting him upward from within.

"Is she unharmed?" Lloyd asked. He pushed the knife against the beast's neck, reminding it not to make any sudden movements. "Tell me!"

"She's in the wid da wights! Dat's all I know!" the bird squealed, its voice piercing Lloyd's ears. "Dere, I told you. Now let me go!"

"If I let you go now, you'd just run back and tell that queen of yours," Lloyd reasoned. "C'mon. You're leading me to Nino."

Although the bird protested vocally, it complied rather willingly. Lloyd chalked it up to the persuasive powers of the iron edge. (Didn't imps fear iron anyway?) He took a moment to glance at the egg. Normal goose eggs were fairly large anyway, but the golden egg seemed monstrously large, as large as his head.

"She's wid da her Ladyship," the goose warned solemnly. Lloyd grimaced.

"Then me and her Royal Highness can have a little talk," he replied, equally firm. Lloyd Reed prided himself on being the level-headed brother. And if he was all riled up and angry, then this Fairy Queen had something to fear, 'cause Linus Reed was probably gearing up to rip her magic-mottled head off.

If he wasn't already dead or lost.

**..0..**

Linus twitched as yet another little brownie—pixie, gnome, dwarf, he'd had enough with classification for today—stepped over him, like a small hill. There were other dark spots where smaller things had lain; probably children, Linus cringed. He'd never once killed a child, even when the job demanded it. There was something inherently wrong about murdering kids in cold blood.

Even Legault didn't hold with it, and he was the cleaner. That was how wrong it was. But these things were going about it like . . . slaughtering pigs or cattle, or reaping a harvest.

Linus gave his bindings another good struggle. They did not loosen, and he earned a sharp pinch in the arm for his trouble. Nothing.

At least he wasn't blindfolded. The room he was in had a low ceiling, made of grey, ominous stone like everything else. If he'd been standing, he would have had to stoop slightly. Little imps scurried about dressed like common gypsies, in ragtag clothing and heavy gold. Linus examined a passing female who was particularly decked out in her stolen goods. A pair of earrings similar to the ones Ursula wore, fairly small against her face, jangled heavily on the fairy's mottled green shoulders. Bracelets she wore like necklaces, in rows. But . . .

No silver. Not a speck.

Another green man rounded him and began to sever the bindings on his feet. Linus' first instinct was to flail as soon as the strange ropes were cut, but an imp with the face of a squashed frog grabbed him by the nose and turned his attention to her.

"You aren'ts moving an inch," she instructed nasally. Her nails dug into his flesh. "Or I rip off your noseses."

Linus stopped trying to roll onto his back to get away. The little woman had strong arms; she could no doubt rip his nose from his face. _Father plays that game with Nino,_ he thought unconsciously. Except this time, it would really be his nose, instead of just father's thumb looped under his index finger. Besides, his sword was still strapped to his back. These creatures hadn't thought to disarm him. They probably didn't need to.

He was forced to his feet. Linus couldn't stop himself from predicting his fate. Would he be woven into a bolt of cloth? Or cooked and eaten for weeks, like when someone brought down a big deer?

Linus did have to slouch forward a little to keep from clobbering himself on the spitefully low ceiling. The main traffic was probably children.

They led him, hands behind his back. It would be best to go along with these creatures, especially since the female was still clutching his nose with a vengeance, perched on his shoulder as he walked.

Linus scanned the hall for a way out, but even with Eyes or Sight or whatever, nothing made itself clear. The corridor became more and more contorted and Linus swore that it was crooked, that it was leading him upside, ever so gradually.

Finally, there was a door. Rather, it was a slab that swung open into a room, lined with a real, lush carpet and real, ornate furniture and tapestries and bookshelves loaded with books and a variety of real foreign knick-knacks. And in the center of it all, with a massive book propped open on her lap, was Nino, intently engrossed in the story.

The whatever-the-hell-they-weres forced him forward. His shock at seeing Nino—unharmed, unconcerned, and indifferent to the peril she was in—locked up his legs and Linus toppled over onto his face with a grunt. The gnomes cared less for him, and left him lying there as they funneled out the room. The slab swung shut, and a tapestry draped itself over the stone wall conveniently.

Nino looked up. Her sprightly blue eyes grinned quicker than her smile and she laughed with joy to see him.

"Brother!" she exclaimed merrily, rushing to untie him. The book was haphazardly shoved aside as she stood. Her hands, skilled in knots, loosened the thick ropes with deft ease.

Both he and Lloyd had taught her all the skills a girl like her would need. (Knot-tying, tree-climbing, cookie-stealing, where to aim a kick if neither he nor Lloyd were able to make it in time, etc.) Linus felt a bubble of pride rise in his chest; he'd taught her well.

"Urgh, I thought I'd never get free," Linus muttered, rubbing his wrists gingerly as Nino tossed away the gag. "Nino, you're in danger. We've gotta get out of here!"

"No, we're not!" Nino giggled. Linus stared at her, awaiting her no doubt harebrained explanation. If he'd gone through hell . . . why wasn't Nino in danger? And what about Ursula's stories . . .?

_Dammit!_ Ursula must have been _lying_, just like that filthy Sonia had taught her. Ursula was Sonia's right hand, after all, not loyal to the Reeds, the real Reeds or Nino at all. Not even to the Black Fang. Revulsion lodged itself in his throat, but the more rational part of his nature pushed it down. _Benefit of the doubt_, Uncle Jan repeated, whenever he and his brother stole sweets and then denied it with full mouths. It was funny that he was remembering such far-off memories now . . .

"Why not? What's going on, Nino?" Linus asked, a little calmer now.

"I dunno," Nino shrugged carelessly, sitting down next to him. She pulled the book back onto her lap. It made her seem comparatively smaller, the giant tome resting on her knees like that. "This is boring now."

It took Linus a moment to realize she was referring to the book. He chuckled tentatively.

"Of course, it doesn't got pictures," Linus shook his head, leaning over to see the wall of text. Nino only ever looked at books for pictures.

"Doesn't have," she corrected mockingly. Linus swatted her.

"Danger or no, we have to find Lloyd and get out of here," he said in a rare serious, calm tone. "I don't like it here, Nino. There's a Queen here, and she sounds like a nasty piece of work—"

"Oh, I met her," Nino supplied readily. "She's not so bad. She said I could stay as long as I liked. Lloyd's in the other room, talking to her now."

This surprised him. So, Lloyd, ever the practical one, had sought out the queen immediately? Linus sighed.

"Well, damn," he frowned, leaning back on his palms. His hands sunk into the thick carpet. "All my work is already done for me."

Nino laughed. It was nice to hear her laugh again, even if it was at him. Linus grinned too, holding out a fist. "Let's play, lass."

She stared blankly at the fist for a few scant seconds until recognition must have dawned on her; Linus didn't blame her for forgetting their game. It'd been a long day for her. Nino held out her fist even with his.

"Rock, knives, paper!"

Linus crowed in triumph. "Ha, I win—paper covers rock! Say it!"

This time Nino stared at him blankly. Truly, utterly confused blue eyes stared back at him, without the slightest clue. A cold hand of realization gripped him.

"Say what, brother?" she asked, the color draining steadily from her face. Her voice was a little hollow sounding, like wind through the cracks in a house. Linus glanced at the pictureless book she'd been reading so avidly. As casually as he could, he closed the covers of the open book and took note of the title.

"Nino, what is this book called, anyway?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.

"_The Flamebrand,_" she shrugged, idly picking at the carpet. Linus watched in horror as she regained the warm, light voice and sanguine complexion of his little sister.

In one fluid movement, Linus leapt for her throat. His fingers closed around the white, paling flesh there and clamped down.

"B-brother!" she choked. "I can't . . . can't breathe . . ."

"Imposter," he growled, enraged. "Don't you ever call me that!"

Nino's face changed then. Her pupils disappeared until her eyes were blue plates on white, contracting into pinpoints. Linus felt her own hands clasp his wrists; her touch burned like fire and seared as her moldy-green fingernails dug into his skin.

"Fine," she gasped, and with surprising strength, threw him against a wall. Linus rebounded quickly, drawing his sword as she sucked down air desperately. Her white face wrung itself thick with deep-etched grooves.

"Lilith," Linus said, his voice gone cold with hatred.

"Yes," she replied, her voice remarkably smooth and youthful. Queen Lilith was no younger than the dead King Grendel, it seemed; just less decayed. But although her face and posture where bent and distorted with age and evil, her silken golden hair flowed to the floor, shifting with every movement, as if it had a life of its own.

With a furious roar, Linus raised his blade and charged at the Fae Queen, just as she began to laugh.

**..author's note..**

**I am not a good person. But none the less, I appear before you with a probably sub-par chapter of a fic that has not been updated since January-ish. I foresee two more chapters of this, if all goes well. Thank you for not, y'know, killing me.**

**Meelu da Bold**


	8. VIII The Reunion

"You're leading me in circles."

An accusation, not a statement. The human-faced goose shuddered as Lloyd pressured the blade of the knife against the feathers there.

"I swear, dis is da way!" it shrieked. Lloyd cringed once more, tightening his grip. The bird's shrill defense only made him want to kill it even more.

"Just shut up!" he snapped. The heathen palace of the Faerie Queen ground against his toughest nerves until they were ash. Nino, who quailed at the sight of blood, would be an absolute wreck at best.

The bird didn't even bother with a rebuttal. Lloyd estimated the bird had guided him for all of a quarter-hour, but it_ felt_ like hours. At least he could identify that feeling, as horrible as the current situation was. On a long mission, even the lowly second dragged on forever. But there, the similarities ended—after the kill, there'd always been some sort of bittersweet euphoria.

No such luck here. Lloyd gritted his teeth and tensed as they passed through another wall. The bird seemed unaffected by wall-passing, but to Lloyd, it felt like his skin was being peeled from his body and icy-cold water dumped over the bared muscle. All the willpower that had been instilled in him by torture-training almost didn't match up to the incredibly painful sensation of passing through solid stone while still being solid yourself.

". . . we're here," the bird said in a tiny voice.

It was yet another grey stone cavern, although somehow the stone extended a good few hundred feet up, where Lloyd could see a crude parody of a royal chandelier made from . . . tree branches, an eerie violet fire that snowed pale, milky blue sparks, and thick, silvery spider's webs. Lloyd's eyes widened as he spotted the mammoth spider that had spun those threads.

As a child, he'd been plagued by an inexplicable fear of spiders that had eventually been forced out of him by his father's unsympathetic tutelage. He felt all of those lessons sink to the floor, shrivel dry and go up in smoke as the spider scuttled across its fiery web and dive to the floor at a breakneck speed.

"Don't eat me!" squawked the bird wildly, before Lloyd could do anything. Not that he could break from his momentary paralysis long enough to do anything. "I brought you som'ing else!"

Nothing like a good betrayal to push one's phobias to the wayside. Lloyd's eyes locked on the creature in a feral sort of glare.

"_What?_" he asked in a low voice.

The spider could not talk, it seemed, but clicked its jaws in rapid succession. The sound made Lloyd weaken again. Just how many nightmares had he suffered like this? Possibly hundreds, probably more. The spiders typically grew bigger as he got older, although he'd stopped having those nightmares as a nine-year-old. At twenty-something, this was probably the right size.

"No no no, don't eat me!" the bird flailed and Lloyd almost released it.

"Shut up!" he hollered over the bird's violent racket, struggling to keep a hold of it. "You bloody goose, what the hell did you bring me into!"

The spider followed the conflict between the bird and the man with its eight disinterested eyes. Lloyd froze again as the creature took a few steps forward, as did the fairy goose. A golden egg skidded across the floor and bounced against the wall he'd just passed through, coming to rest at his feet.

"Dis is her Ladyship's guardian," the bird trembled as Lloyd's knife pressed even closer to its neck, right where he could feel a pounding vein. "Mothkiller. Da only way to get to her Ladyship wid out going through da pixies is to ride Mothkiller."

Lloyd could only stare in terror, without even attempting to mask it.

"How do you do that?"

If the bird was impressed by his resolve, the monstrosity didn't take the time to show it. It hesitated before replying, prompted again by the knife.

"You godda feed her," it confessed. He looked into its human-like face and into its animal eyes. It panicked again, wailing loudly. "Don't feed me to her! Don't!"

Another egg slid across the floor. Lloyd briefly wondered where they all came from. The goose was huge, but not _that_ huge. His eyes widened. Lloyd extended his foot to kick an egg towards Mothkiller.

"My name is Lloyd Reed," he said, more confidently than he felt. "I need to see the Queen. Accept this egg as my payment."

"What?" the bird whimpered. "My eggs . . .!"

"You eggs or you," Lloyd said darkly. The bird nodded quickly, and fell silent.

Mothkiller lowered her wide, many-eyed head to examine the golden egg. Taking the shining object in its jaws, Mothkiller turned around and began climbing up the thread. Lloyd followed its path intently. Part of the training was to be able to face your fears, but deep inside, he knew that this was just frightened fascination.

Mothkiller disappeared from sight momentarily, and then reappeared almost five minutes later. Lloyd's arm loosened on the bird and he let it stand freely. As he slid the knife back into its hiding place, Lloyd bent over to pick up the remaining egg. It felt oddly light. Mothkiller lowered her head to the ground and raised it again. Lloyd took that as an agreement to the terms he'd set.

"Get out of here," he snapped at the bird. It quivered and then turned to flee.

Mothkiller circled around so that her hairy abdomen faced him. The thick, short hairs shone black in the shower of glowing blue snowflakes. Tentatively, Lloyd reached out and touched Mothkiller with just the brush of his fingers. When the massive spider did not whirl around and attack him, Lloyd swallowed his hesitation and gingerly grasped a section of hair, which was rigid and tough. He balanced the second egg in his the crook of his arm carefully, in case Mothkiller would require anything else. When she sensed that his body was stretched safely over her, hanging by a few hairs, Mothkiller began her ascent.

Mothkiller's movements, rapid and graceful to watch, nearly shook Lloyd from her back. He didn't hold as tightly as he would like out of fear; if he pulled out one of these deeply rooted hairs, she could easily drop him to his death. The ground disappeared behind him.

Mothkiller hauled herself up steadily crawling up the thread and then the mass of artistic threads. The violet fire burned from her prey, lumps of silk wrapped around mutant little bodies. Mothkiller ate fairies too, he realized. The still struggling victims sparked the showers of blue. He scanned the webs for any human child-sized bundles, but nothing exceeded the thin, short sizes of dwarven creatures. A deep sense of admiration for the spider who hunted fae things blossomed in him.

"It's beautiful up here," he commented, sincerely. Mothkiller's web was spaciously arranged and artfully decorated, just like the Sacaen dreamcatchers Nino sometimes bought at carnivals.

Mothkiller paused. A jolt of fright seized Lloyd as she did. Had his comment offended her? He glanced up at her head to see her preening her pedipalps proudly and click her jaw. When she began to move again, the jarring motions of climbing suddenly became much smoother. Lloyd heaved a breath he did not realize he'd been holding.

The transfer from vertical to horizontal was also made delicately, and almost leisurely. She was showing off the heart of her lair. Despite the urgency in him, Lloyd found himself respecting the hours of work which must have gone into the construction of such a masterful home. He noted, with some perverse satisfaction, that many of the fairies she'd caught still wiggled violently in their silk, violet-burning tombs.

Mothkiller crossed the gaps to a wide, low-ceiling cave, adjacent to the towering cavern here. Her webs crisscrossed the floor here inches above, although Lloyd would not have released his grip on her back for the entire world. Beneath the shimmering strands, the cavern ground was coated in a sickening, acidic-looking green moss between stalagmites.

She halted suddenly and tilted her head in on direction, where Lloyd beheld a white mass that he recognized from the bushes in the village he'd grown up in.

"Those must be your babies," he said breathlessly. Thousands of little Mothkillers. How did her Ladyship keep those spiders from eating all her subjects, if each spider Mothkiller's size needed so much?

Mothkiller looked at him with her eight eyes as mournfully as an emotionless spider could.

"Oh," he said. "She . . . the Queen . . . she's going to kill them all, isn't she?"

Mothkiller did not answer, but turned her head to the enormous egg sac and tipped her jaws to the poisonous green floor. Lloyd bit his lip, before speaking.

"Don't worry," he spoke hesitantly, growing stronger. "Me and my brother, we'll kill her before she even has a chance to touch your eggs. She took something of ours—our sister—and we're going to kill her for it."

The spider weighed this for a second and then restarted her scuttle past her sac and deeper into the cave. The jostling was so gentle this time that Lloyd felt nearly nothing. Within moments, Mothkiller arrived at a tall golden wall. Not solid gold, Lloyd saw, but a pile of stolen trinkets. Goblets, plates, toys, crowns, scepters, all heaped in the center of the path.

Mothkiller rotated smoothly so Lloyd could leap from her back onto the mound of gold objects. He offered her the last egg, which shone brighter than the dingy objects collected underneath his feet. Skillfully, Mothkiller balanced the egg between two fingerless legs, thick as Ursula's arm. She bowed to him gratefully. On a whim, Lloyd bowed back. In a way, the monstrous spider reminded him of his own mother, proud and protective and lovely.

Lloyd watched Mothkiller disappear behind the bend in the wall before turning himself to climb the mess of gold.

**..0..**

She sobbed harshly, curling into a tighter ball as fiery-hot, pitch-black little hands pricked at her skin, poking into every crevice of her face and body. Nino brushed them away wildly, but the wights only returned with renewed vigor.

"Lloyd!" she cried, tears streaking her face white and black. "Linus!"

When her brother did not respond, Nino began to weeper harder, until she heaved without tears at all. The wights pounded at her furiously. Her brothers liked her well enough, but they weren't really her brothers. What if they weren't even coming? She certainly didn't deserve to be their sister, not in this state.

_What would they do?_

The instant the thought struck her, she knew exactly what her brothers would do; Lloyd and Linus would be trying to escape and return to the safe house, wherever that was. The tome of Elfire was nestled in her cloak, thin from practice. At the base, she knew where the reserve of tomes was hidden, but this was her only weapon. She'd use it well.

But first things first. Resolve welling up inside her, Nino swept as many of the charcoal black creatures away and blasted then with the shortened incantation. To her delight, the beasts were torn apart by the magic flare, leaving less than half of the numbers they once possess.

"L-listen!" she choked, standing. Her back was against the padded wall. Some sort of blackened, velvet curtain was drawn around the circular room, hiding the solid walls. "Listen! If you don't stop this _instant_ I'll kill each and every one of you!"

She waved Elfire at them madly. The wights shuddered and scurried backwards underneath the curtain. Nino paused before they all disappeared and then raced to where they'd fled. She ripped the curtain from the wall, only to find a decorative, pretty wooden wall. Nino bit her lip, bending at the knee to examine the crack between the wall and the ruined Caledonian rug. Nothing there at all.

Nino forced down her panic attack and seized the curtain again, ripping it from its place, magicked to the wall. It tore easily, revealing an unbroken, nearly seamless wall of wood. Nino brushed against the smooth wall three times without luck. The wights had disappeared perfectly into the woodwork. Nino screamed then, more out of rage than fright. She knew that would set in soon.

Would she starve here? Would the queen come to fetch her? Somehow, starving seemed the more favorable option.

"Be clever, Nino," she said, the sound of her own voice strangely comforting. "Think."

Nino scanned the room for any sort of bludgeoning tool. There was nothing but the thick black rug and the torn curtain. There had been no rod to suspend the material. Nino's eyes turned first up; nothing but continuous wood there. Stepping carefully, Nino glanced at the floor beneath her feet. She set Elfire down momentarily.

Picking a random point where the rug met the wall, Nino dug her nails into the crevice and lodged her fingers underneath the tough weave. She pulled up. The carpeting came up with some difficulty, like roots had set down. With a violent jerk, Nino fell backwards as the rug came suddenly free. Clambering to her feet, she peered where she'd ripped the rug free and squeaked. Directly beneath her was a hole.

A sheer, black hole. To her complete terror, Nino felt the rug collapse underneath her weight, and fall. Briefly, she was taken by a sense of weightlessness, as if she were simply floating. Her freefall cut off abruptly. Nino heard the sound of jangled metal and felt the sharp jabs of . . . of what? Nino tumbled forward and down a hill of some sort. She opened her eyes. She had not known she'd closed them.

Nino gasped in awe. She was surrounded by _gold._ What sort of madness was this? She turned her head upwards to see the gap in the ceiling, where five feet through she could see the unbroken wood of her prison. Magic! This really was a fairy place. Ursula had taught her something for this. Or had it been Father Kenneth or her mother? She couldn't remember either way.

Had that fairy woman collected all this gold over the years? Goblins lived forever, she supposed. Was this even real? She found her Elfire spell not far from where she herself had fallen and tucked it into its special tome-sized pocket in her cape.

Nino shivered, and tried to stand. She hated this place fervently. Balancing carefully, she managed to pick her way through the sea of gold trinkets and coins. Never before had she seen anything quite like this! There was enough gold here to for every man in Bern to live like a King for the rest of his life. And it certainly stretched on forever.

Walking across it proved difficult, and Nino stumbled more often than she'd like. It was one such stumble that allowed her to hear the stumble—and breathless oath—of another creature. Nestled in the dip in between two hills, Nino held very still, not even daring to breathe.

Her heart stopped as she heard the sound of boots trying to find footing in the mess. Nino slipped her hand into the folds of her blue cape to retrieve Elfire. She crept as quietly as she could to peer around the hill at her unseen companion.

A goblet, loosened by her foot, tumbled against the rest, making an awful racket. Nino froze as a man's voice called out, "Who's there? Show yourself!"

_That's Lloyd's voice! _Nino almost allowed herself to rejoice, but sobered as she remembered the last 'Lloyd' she'd encountered.

"Don't move!" she warned, trying to make her voice intimidating, like Sonia's. She circled the hill to face him. He certainly _looked_ like Lloyd, sans the coat. Nino noticed that this one looked slightly bedraggled and exhausted.

"Nino! Nino, lass, I've been—"

"Shut up!" she cut him off. 'Lloyd' seemed shocked that gentle Nino would speak so harshly. She had the Elfire tome wide open, with sparks already in her hands.

"Lass, it's me, Lloyd—"

"How do I know you are who you say you are?"

'Lloyd' blinked. He bit his lip, thinking.

"We went to the lake yesterday, Nino, remember? Linus was the princess, and I was the monster—" he started. She shook her head. The strange fairy woman had in all likelihood seen that whole scene.

"No good! Anyone could know that," she warned. Nino dredged up a memory from before the lake. "What does 'psychotic' mean?"

'Lloyd' seemed dumbstruck. Elfire sparks huddled together to become a tiny sphere in her palm. 'Lloyd' began to laugh.

"It means . . ." he began, relieved. "That you're attractive and kind and very, very forgiving."

Nino snapped the book shut and nearly dropped it as she ran to her brother and embraced him. She felt tears prick her eyes, although she had thought none were left to cry.

"Lloyd, I was so scared, I didn't know what to do!" she wailed into his chest. He smoothed her hair comfortingly. "There was a woman and she had your face and she had hair like gold snakes and and and—"

"It's alright, I'm here," Lloyd murmured, squeezing her tight. "I was so worried. We found a lump of ice in your bed, Nino!"

"Ice?" she asked, looking up at him.

"Ice," Lloyd said, his eyes darkening. "Nino, that woman you saw—don't say anything, but she rules this place, Nino. This is a fairy place."

Nino nodded, as if she knew it already, instinctively. "L-like, Queen Hellene, right?"

"Yes, exactly," Lloyd explained, kneeling as best he could, to level with her. "Linus is here too, but I don't know where. We're going to have to find him, Nino, and get out as quick as possible. Ursula's waiting for us on the outside."

"Auntie Ursula came?" Nino asked, riddled with disbelief.

"Mmhm. We're going to have hurry and kill her Ladyship," Lloyd said seriously. "I don't think I can leave until I do. I . . . I promised someone."

"I get it," Nino replied, heartening. A smile returned to her face. "L-like a mission, right? Someone's commissioned you to kill a corrupt and evil ruler."

"That's exactly right, lass," Lloyd smiled. His face seemed tired and old. "So all you have to do is stay brave for a little bit longer. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Swear it upon the Fang?"

"I swear upon the Fang that I can stay brave long enough to kill the fairy queen, find Linus and get out of here."

"There's our lass."

Lloyd kissed her forehead and then stood up. Taking his hand, Nino followed her brother across the waves of treasure with renewed vigor. Lloyd always knew how to make her feel better.

**..0..**

Lilith would not stay rent in two for long.

Linus charged again, heedless of the dark magic Lilith conjured to set against him. His sword cleaved her brittle waist, digging into her belly, but the blade passed straight through bloodlessly. Roaring in aggravation, the younger Reed brother struck again, with similar results.

The Fairy Queen howled with laughter as Linus panted. "_You can't kill me!"_

She may have been right.

Her hair roiled and curled, like tendrils of a living plant. Linus could not conceive of a way to kill her. His blade had already severed her head, but suddenly it was there again, her mottled, sagging neck whole once more.

Lilith had no care for the rich decorations of the room, it seemed, as she blasted grooves into the carpets and marred the furniture. Wanton destruction seemed to be the true extent of her power. It took everything Linus had to even dodge Lilith's spells.

"_You can't touch me!" _Lilith cackled, dominating the center of the room. Her haggard form glowed with a halo of golden hair that snatched at Linus' feet and ankles. He tried slashing at the strands, but his blade bounced off of them like wires.

Her power went beyond anything Ursula, Rats, or even dead King Grendel had warned him of. Her spells of illusion surpassed the Sight. Even a brush with one of those dark beams would probably kill him. Linus rolled haphazardly to avoid contact with one such beam. The golden waves of hair coiled around her collar like a thick necklace.

_No silver anywhere._

A cold shock ran through him. Although Linus kept running, he switched his sword into his shield hand (although his shield was probably leaning up against the wall in the training yard.) The nimble fingers on his right hand reached up to his ear and pulled the earring he wore high on the cartilage. It felt small and light in his hand, thin as it was. Lloyd wore the twin. Both had belonged to the long dead Maria Reed, her treasured silver earrings.

Linus chucked it at Lilith with all his strength.

It took her a second to even notice he'd thrown it. Lilith raised an eyebrow, shielding herself with a tendril of snaking hair. Linus' suspicions held true as the little silver trinket burned a hole in her defenses. Lilith's eyes widened in shock before she could shift out of the way, a fatal indecision as the earring buried itself in one brilliant, electric blue eye.

Her screech was deafening. Linus watched, his eyes locked on her in broad fascination, as Lilith clawed at her eye. A greenish, mucky brown substance oozed from her face. Strangely, Linus still wanted the earring back.

For now, though, he ran. Lilith was too much alone. He needed his brother to back him up. Later, he'd rob her corpse's eye socket, but until then . . .

Linus raced towards the door at the opposite end of the room. Lilith shot a withering glare with her good eye, and streams of undamaged blonde hair. Linus stepped lightly out of the way, and the strikes that had been meant to impale him blasted through the ornate door's golden hinges and detailed painting. Linus kicked it down and leapt from the room into a deep pit. A cavern, it seemed, with a higher ceiling than physics and common sense should allow. He shrugged the shock away. The fairy palace of Queen Lilith didn't abide by spatial rules anyway.

Lilith's mess of writhing hair poked out of the door he'd just exited. Linus ducked under the low point it seemed to be pasted onto and followed a trail of gold pieces behind a bend. The layer of coins became thicker as he ran onward, until the ground was coated in them. Linus paid no heed to the money or the occasional diadem or goblet thrown in amongst the heap. He glanced behind him to see if Lilith was in hot pursuit, crawling along by her hair.

He bowled over another creature, smaller than him, but by a lesser margin than most creatures he'd met down here.

"Linus!" his brother exclaimed, stretched across the gold. He held his head, dazed. "Is that you?"

"How do I know you're Lloyd?" Linus demanded sharply. Queen Lilith wouldn't fool him again, not after last time. Lloyd's expression darkened.

"Linus, I'm going to hit you," he threatened, reaching for his sword. Linus whooped.

"Brother, it is you!" he rejoiced. "Listen, there's a queen here—"

"I know! We gotta kill her—"

"Yeah, but I already tangled with her and she's damn near impossible—"

"Her _hair_—"

"It's insane, she's a gorgon or something—"

"Will you shut up—"

"She's right behind me, Lloyd!—"

"LINUS!"

This last cry was a young woman's, more like a girl. Nino raced around the corner and flung her arms around her other brother. Linus' breath was knocked from his lungs. Lloyd took this time to elaborate.

"It's her hair that gives her power, or so I'm told," Lloyd explained quickly. "We have to cut it if we're going to kill her."

"Swords don't do it," Linus supplied quickly, patting Nino on the head. "I tried."

"What about magic?" Nino asked, looking up at him.

_Nino was back._

Linus squeezed her in a bear hug. His little sister was safe, or would be soon. All they had left to do was kill the Queen, pick up Ursula and go home. This was the family Reed. They could do anything, united.

"No, I don't believe we've tried magic yet, lass," Linus said, turning to look over his shoulder. "And it's worth a shot. She's on my heels as we speak."

"Here's the plan then," Lloyd said, leaning forward.

Further down the twisting corridor, Lilith could barely walk. A creature as she was unused to pain, especially the excruciating pain of holy silver. The earring was lodged deep in the forefront of her brain, but since she could not die, all it managed to do was impair her and enrage her. Queen Lilith was a mere shadow of herself, much like King Grendel. Dead, but unable to die. As was the fate of the dark magic users.

Once, long ago, she remembered being a girl. A human girl, much like Nino of the Fang, bright and lively. She remembered the cold, beautiful snow of her homeland, and the Goblin King that had whisked her away. A time when she had been Lilah, not Lilith. There had once been a time where she had been a promising mage-knight in the service of the General Barigan, and not a shriveled old Queen of wretched-faced, hard-hearted pixies.

That time was very far away, and she could no longer remember it.

Lilith used her enchanted hair as a crutch, her body swinging limply from her locks. The snarling threads crept into crevices in the walls, the gold she'd collected over the years as testament to her hidden humane urge for real wealth. It had long since lost its luster to her, and it now became worth even less than dirt. Her blood spattered across the precious metal and dissolved it.

All she wanted now was violence, to sate her bloodlust. The Fairy Queen was little more than a mindless monster.

Two figures—human, like she had been. Male, tall, garbed in dark colors. She cared not for those details. Linus and Lloyd were their names. Lilith glared at them balefully with her good eye, and then lashed out with a powerful expulsion of black energy.

Lloyd split off from his brother in a lightning-fast strike. Lilith could not seem to follow the smaller, quicker of the two, no matter how she tried. The continuous burn of the silver seeped into her ancient body and the nimble swordmaster wove in and out of her hair, slashing futilely at the regenerating limbs and torso. Lilith roared in pain. Her mind could not find the spells that deflected the sensation of parting and rejoining flesh.

A creature such as she was not used to pain. Lilith's hair released its hold on the wall and she collapsed on the gold paved floor into the acid of her own blood. She remained unharmed. Her own magic would not touch her; such was the nature of magic, Lilith had once supposed.

Linus, the taller, broader-shouldered of the two charged her fallen corpse-like body, his silver blade raised high. She knocked him away mid-jump with a coil of hair. Foolish and rash, Lilith would have thought. But Lilith was not alive enough to think.

"_YOU CANNOT KILL ME,"_ her voice bellowed, a mere echo of her previous taunts and boasts.

"Yes, I can!" a green-haired twig of a girl said, standing only a pace behind her. Lilith turned just in time to see twin orbs of magefire careen toward her, setting her golden hair aflame.

Lilith wailed helplessly as her golden locks singed and turned coal black. The smell of burning hair made all three humans cringe. Lilith took the opportunity to strike again, flailing her dark magic in a crazed, furious tantrum. This time, a bolt of actual lightning snapped off Lloyd's sword, knocking the gust of oily violet energy to the wall. The spell exploded and left a small crater, but the girl was unharmed.

Nino cried out the incantation again, whipping Lilith with another barrage of fire. Lilith lay in her vomit-colored blood in a pit of eaten-away gold. Her hair filled the cavern with smoke as it burned. Lilith turned her face so that her good eye could catch a glimpse of Nino, to send her away with a curse of hate, but all she could see was Linus, purposefully striding toward her. Lilith groaned, not quite powerless.

She reached for his boot, the closest part of him to her. Mercilessly, he plunged the edge of his blade into her neck. More of her tainted blood spurted out, but he was pleased to see that her head stayed severed. Lloyd turned Nino's face away as Lilith died.

Linus wiped the blade on the clean bits of her dress, grimacing. Nino stepped forward, breaking free of Lloyd's grip.

"Look!" she shouted, pointing.

Linus gasped as the remnants of blood on his sword turned a familiar, bright crimson. Lilith's singular shockingly blue eye turned black in the center, forming a pupil and a normal grayish blue iris. Her face distorted itself, her nose reshaping itself. Lilith's fingers disowned the extra joint and the green fingernails popped off to reveal normal, chewed-on nails.

Linus placed a hand on her face, brushing the dead woman's darkening hair from her eye and plunged a finger into her skull. When he removed his hand, he held a silver earring that matched the one in Lloyd's ear. Although Linus' hand had been stained red, the earring seemed as untouched as when he threw it.

"I guess this is what really killed her," he said thoughtfully, before slipping the jewelry into his pocket. He'd wash it first before replacing it on his ear.

"Huh," Lloyd sighed, gratefully looping an arm around Nino's shoulders.

"I wonder what happened that made her like that," Nino murmured aloud, leaning into him. "All evil and stuff."

"I don't really care to find out, lass," Lloyd confessed, rubbing the back of his neck. "Let's get out of this hell."

**..0..**

Ursula shivered as the bright moon sank through the treetops and dawn tinged the sky. She huddled against her pine tree, wrapping Lloyd's coat around her to ward off the chill. In all fairness, it was a good coat and good material, but it did not do anything for her feet, which poked out from underneath the hem no matter how close she tucked her knees to her chest.

She waited faithfully, through the day, for Lloyd and Linus to return with Nino, unsuitably clad and worried out of her mind. And bored out of her head. Ursula dozed off through the later part of the evening, but had awoken sharply when she heard a wolf's howl in the far distance.

What if they _never_ returned? What if time played fairy-tricks and they didn't come back for five-and-fifty years?

"I'm giving you one more hour, Lloyd Reed," she muttered, before closing her eyes to take another short nap.

"Thank you, ma'am, but I don't think we'll need it," he replied.

Ursula's eyes snapped open suddenly. Lloyd hauled himself out of the gap in the ground, grinning like a madman. The Valkyrie found that her breath would not come.

"Y . . . you're . . ."

"Hi, Auntie Ursula!" Nino greeted, her worn-out face filled with her customary good cheer. Ursula raced forward and kissed the girl's cheeks. Nino wrapped her arms around Ursula in a hug.

"Oh, gods, you're alive! I can't believe it," she said, her smooth voice husky with relief, embracing Nino right back. "No one ever comes back."

"Slap me, Lloyd, I think I'm seeing things," Linus joked as Lloyd pulled him out of the pit. "The Blue Crow is smiling."

Ursula froze momentarily. She released Nino, who took a step back to observe.

"What does that mean?" she asked in a low tone, arms crossed. The selfsame smile still tugged at her lips, although she did her best to drown it in a sober expression.

"Nothing," Linus gulped, raising his hands in defeat. Ursula took a step forward to berate him and he took a defensive step back.

For an instant, Ursula was afraid he'd fall backward into the entrance to the fairy world and break his neck. Linus glanced down at the solid ground underneath his foot, a wide square of forest floor uncovered by needles.

"What?" he raised an eyebrow in confusion. He shook his head. "Damn pixies."

"Forget it. We're not going back, ever," Lloyd shook his head, speaking firmly. "It's almost morning, right? Let's go celebrate."

He looked at Ursula expectantly. "I'll want my coat back, too."

She sniffed, warning him with a cool, composed glare. "You can try," she offered.

"I know!" Lloyd slapped his knee. "I'll get you a new dress. You like violet, right? And what is it that you like, silk? From Etruria, right?"

"Where are you going to get the money?" she asked practically.

Lloyd grinned at his brother, who grinned right back. Reaching into their pockets, the brothers Reed revealed handfuls of gold coins. Nino giggled madly.

"We were _fighting_ for our _lives_ and you still had the time to loot the place?" she snorted behind her hands. Ursula rolled her eyes.

"I think I want a blue dress, this time," she said, smugly. "And a new Bolting tome."

"Me too!" Nino chirped, waving her hand. "I want one too!"

"When you're older, maybe," Lloyd said kindly. Nino pouted, but it didn't last long. She was back home, with her brothers and her auntie and her family. No matter what, she was Nino Reed of the Black Fang. The Black Fang protects their own, and she had proof.


	9. IX The End

"What happened to the girl after that, mama?" Lugh asked, curious. Nino kissed his forehead.

"She and her brothers lived long, happy lives and never had to worry about fairies or monsters ever again," she said softly, smiling at her little boy.

"That's boring," Rei shook his head. "They should've had more adventures. They should've fought a dragon!"

"A dragon, hmm?" Nino chuckled. "Rar! I'm a dragon, come to take you away and eat you!"

Nino pounced on an embarrassed Rei, who protested as other children giggled in the background.

"Moooom," he groaned as she wrapped her arms around him and kissed his brow too.

"You grow up too fast, Rei," Nino complained, ruffling his hair as she sat up and released him. "You'll be a full-grown man by the time I get back!"

Rei shrunk back in the bed, dejectedly. Nino frowned as Lugh did the same.

"Why won't you tell us where you're going?" Lugh asked sadly. "Mama? Can't we go with you?"

"No, my loves," their mother replied, somberly. "Bern is in civil unrest, what with the King and all. I have to go alone. I'll be back in no time, I swear, with a special surprise for you both."

Rei and Lugh nodded, leaning back in the bed. Nino had to bite back tears as she stood up. Her hands wrung at the fabric of her tattered old dress.

"I love you two," she said, preparing to turn around and leave without her flesh and blood. "Be good for Father Lucius."

"We will," they chorused.

"Love you, mama," Lugh murmured, curling up next to his brother.

Nino blew them a kiss and then walked down the aisle of beds, swallowing her misgivings. Lucius was waiting for her by the door. His hair, normally loose, was bound up in a tight braid for sleep.

"That was an interesting story," he said when the two of them stood parting at the door, with a touch of a smile in his voice. In his hand he held a candlestick, with a thick, squat candle lit in the center. "Is any of it true?"

Nino glanced over her shoulder at him, putting up her hood against the cold. She seemed to be thinking, and a strange expression passed over her girlish features.

"No," she lied. "Not at all."

Nino Reed stepped out of the candlelight disappeared into the dark streets of Araphen's capital en route to Bern. She never came back.

**..0..**

_This story is dedicated to the following people: Becki for creatingthe Scouring, Rai for helping me manage it,Shea-chan for hitting me whenever necessary, Polaris for telling me the original beginning was boring, everybody who is NOT leaving me to go to college, everyone who IS, Harufor not complaining when I kicked her off the computer to work on it, Greg for complaining when I did, everybody at the Scouring and/or RoM for, y'know, NOT killing me, all the folks at Blazing Writers (joinjoinjoinjoinjoin), and of course, Mabsy and Kess for needing to be fed and for bringing me presents of dead mice and birds._

**_With love,_**

**_Meelu the Bold. The end._**


End file.
